Facebook Messenger adds 1,500 emoji to 'increase diversity'

Facebook is introducing a new raft of better, and more diverse, emoji.

The tech company said the move is its attempt to "make emojis more representative of the world we live in".

Advertisement

"Emojis have changed the way we talk to each other and people love them!" wrote the company in a post. "In fact, nearly 10 per cent of mobile sends in Messenger include emojis."

"However, not all platforms have kept up with emoji standards as they've evolved - which means sometimes the emoji you wanted to send wasn't the one that showed up. Nor are they living up to the gender and skin tone diversity that we see in our world everyday."

Read next

Twitter adds 69 new emoji - but there’s a catch

ByLibby Plummer

The idea of introducing more diversity into emoji is not new. A presentation by a group of Google employees to Unicode, which make emoji, in May this year, suggested there should be more professional representation for women. In March, a proposed change would allow skin and hair colour to be altered for all emoji.

In April last year, LGBT emoji were introduced, and in February of the same year, racially diverse emoji were added to the Unicode alphabet.